First negative response to Kreiler’s Der Mann

Hanno Wember reported on the first negative review of Kurt Kreiler’s new book Der Mann der Shakespeare Erfand (The Man who Invented Shakespeare) on his German-language, Oxfordian website: Shake-speare Today. The book review appeared in the leading German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt General Newspaper) on January 12, 2010 under the title: “Wer bin ich – und wenn ja, wie viele nicht?” (Who am I – and if so, how many am I not?) by Tobias Doring.

The “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung “(FAZ) has just published the latest in a series of reviews [of Kreiler’s book] in the German print media. Tobias Döring is the first to side with the man from Stratford-but only indirectly, and with a highly defensive rationale: “There’s no reason for doubt.”

Tanke has also translated another review of Kreiler’s book that appeared in Weiner Zeitung (Newspaper from Vienna) on December 19, 2009 titled “Vom Himmel gefallene Genies” (A Genius Out of the Blue) by Gerald Schmickl. The translation appears on the Shake-speare Today English language section under the title: A Genius Out of the Blue.

Tanke translates Schmickl’s commentary:

With a modicum of skepticism and common sense, it’s rather easy to accept the proposition that this actor and theatrical entrepreneur from Stratford, possessing relatively little means and little education, couldn’t, at the same time, have been a great dramatic genius. Unless of course one believes that a genius can fall from the sky, as it were-a notion that’s by no means incidental to the bourgeois theory of art. Like its very own Christmas miracle. And it’s for the same reason that this theory clings to such a notion so tenaciously.